Beware the Curves

Chapter 22

The morning session opened with Irvine calling a witness from New Orleans. The witness testified that he operated a store there, that he had sold the revolver introduced in evidence on behalf of the prosecution to the defendant John Dittmar Ansel some years earlier. He produced a firearms register bearing the signature of the defendant, and he identified the defendant.

There was no cross-examination.

“Now then, if the Court please,” Irvine said as a matter of routine, the tone of his voice showing that his spirit wasn’t in it, “I would like to move again to reinstate the evidence of the witness Manning.”

Judge Lawton had opened his mouth to deny the motion when Barney Quinn was on his feet.

“May I be heard, Your Honor?”

“It won’t be necessary,” Judge Lawton said.

“Very well, Your Honor, thank you, Your Honor. The defendant feels that, with the identification of the firearm in question, the testimony of the witness Manning has been connected up and the defendant withdraws his motion to strike the evidence of this witness.”

“You do what?”

“We withdraw our motion to strike out the evidence. The defendant believes that technically the evidence should now be permitted to stand.”

“Well, the Court doesn’t feel that way,” Judge Lawton snapped.

Irvine was quick to grab at the advantage. “The defendant has withdrawn his objection, withdrawn his motion to strike out the testimony of the witness Manning?”

“That is correct,” Quinn said.

Judge Lawton hesitated a long while.

“Under those circumstances,” Irvine said, “it would seem there is no question before the Court, and the testimony of this witness is reinstated.”

“Very well,” Judge Lawton said, and frowned at Quinn.

Thereafter, Drude Nickerson was called to the stand.

Nickerson, a paunchy, ward-heeler type, went back in his testimony to the time when he had been driving a taxicab on the night of the shooting. He identified Ansel as the man whom he had picked up at the airport some time after eight in the evening, the man who had been nervous and upset, the man whom he had driven to the residence of Karl Carver Endicott.

Quinn made only a perfunctory cross-examination of Nickerson.

The district attorney then called Cooper Franklin Hale to the stand.

Hale walked quietly to the stand, took the oath, gave his name and address, and eased himself cautiously into the witness chair, as though making certain there were no hidden wires or secret traps.

Hale testified that he had gone out to Endicott’s house the night of the shooting, that Endicott had received a visitor, had excused himself and had gone upstairs, that Hale had waited downstairs for Endicott to finish his business with the man who had interrupted the session by ringing the doorbell, that he had heard a revolver shot from upstairs, that he had started for the stairs and had seen the figure of a man dashing downstairs immediately after the shot had been fired. He identified the man as being the defendant John Dittmar Ansel.

Again Quinn asked a few questions.

“That’s the prosecution’s case, Your Honor,” Irvine said.

“If the Court please,” Quinn said, getting to his feet, “we were not given the opportunity to cross-examine the witness Manning. It was understood that she was withdrawn from the stand, and—”

“Her testimony was stricken out,” Irvine said, “and subsequently reinstated without any motion on the part of the defense for the right to cross-examine.”

“That makes no difference,” Judge Lawton ruled. “The understanding was the defendant was to have an opportunity to cross-examine this witness. The Court lost sight of that matter because the Court felt that — Never mind. The witness Manning will return to the stand for cross-examination.”

Helen had really prepared for the newspaper photographers.

Barney Quinn started in on her gently.

Wasn’t it true that she had told Mrs. Endicott about John Ansel being sent on a suicide expedition some two days before Karl Endicott met his death?

The witness admitted that it was true.

“Now isn’t it a fact,” Quinn went on, “that Karl Endicott telephoned you on the day of his death and told you that you had made an assertion to his wife that was false, that he desired an opportunity to explain his side of the matter to you, that he was very much concerned that you had taken office gossip as your source of information and had not given him a chance to explain?”

“Yes.”

“And didn’t you go out to his house at his request on the date of his death?”

“Yes.”

“And,” Quinn shouted, getting to his feet and leveling his finger at her, “didn’t you carry a .38 caliber Colt revolver in your purse that night?”

“It wasn’t in my purse. It was in my bra.”

“There is no reason to shout at the witness,” Irvine said in a low voice. “There is no call for all of these dramatics.”

Judge Lawton seemed completely bewildered. He looked from the suave district attorney to the attorney for the defense and then to the witness on the stand. “Proceed,” he said.

“And isn’t it a fact that, when you went out there that evening, the decedent, Karl Carver Endicott, your former employer, told you that he was expecting a visitor in the person of Cooper Franklin Hale, and didn’t he ask you to go upstairs and wait up there until after he had been able to get rid of Mr. Hale?”

“Yes.”

“And you went upstairs with him?”

“Yes.”

“Into a bedroom?”

“Yes.”

“And there Mr. Endicott discovered the weapon that you had in your possession?”

“Yes.”

“And what did he do with it?”

“He removed the weapon and chided me for carrying it.”

“And then what happened?”

“Then there was a ring at the doorbell, and Mr. Endicott told me that that was Mr. Hale and I would have to excuse him.”

“And then what?”

“Then he went downstairs and was down there for some fifteen minutes when the bell again rang and Mr. Endicott met the defendant at the front door.”

“Do you know it was the defendant?”

“I heard his voice.”

“You knew the defendant?”

“Yes.”

“You knew his voice?”

“Yes.”

“And what did Mr. Endicott do?”

“Took Mr. Ansel... I mean the defendant upstairs and into the den.”

“And this den adjoined the bedroom where you were waiting?”

“Yes.”

“And then what happened?”

“Mr. Endicott excused himself and entered the bedroom and told me that the situation had become more complicated than he had anticipated and that I had better go home, but that he would get in touch with me later on and arrange for a meeting”

“And what did you do?” Quinn asked, his manner showing his complete surprise at what was happening.

Here was a witness who should have been hysterical, who should have been in tears, who should have been reluctantly making damaging admissions, and she was sitting on the witness stand, cool, calm and collected, answering his questions without the slightest embarrassment. Here was the district attorney, who should have been bordering on panic as he saw his carefully constructed case being shattered to smithereens, and Irvine was standing cool, suave and sardonic, his manner that of one who is patiently putting up with tactics of a minor pettifogging nature simply because he doesn’t want to waste the time of the Court with objections.

A deputy sheriff tiptoed along the aisle of the courtroom and put a folded piece of paper into my hand. It was a message from our expert in Pasadena. It stated that he had been served with a subpoena duces tecum to appear and bring the gun with him into court.

I knew then we were sunk. I frantically tried to catch Quinn’s eye before he asked the one last fatal question.

“What did you do after that?”

She said, “I left the house and left the gun lying there on the bureau in the bedroom.”

“Who was in the bedroom?”

“The decedent, Karl Endicott.”

“And where was the defendant?”

“In the adjoining den.”

Quinn said, “That’s all,” and sat down. He was like a man who had hurled his weight against a door to smash it open, and found the door unlocked and unlatched.

District Attorney Irvine smiled benignly. “That is all, Miss Manning. And thank you very much for your frank statement of the facts.”

The witness started to leave the stand.

“Oh, just a moment,” Irvine said. “I have one question, and only one question, Miss Manning. Did you make a statement of what you have just testified to the defense in this case?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“Last night.”

“To whom was that statement made?”

“To two detectives employed by the defendant, Donald Lam and Bertha Cool.”

“Thank you, thank you. That is all,” Irvine said.

The witness left the stand.

Irvine said, “Now Your Honor, in view of the testimony of this witness, it becomes necessary for me to call one more witness.”

He called our expert from Pasadena.

The expert identified the gun as having been received from us. He had, he admitted, cleaned up the gun so that he could fire a test bullet through it. He had not had access to the fatal bullet, and, therefore, he could not state whether that was the gun from which the fatal bullet had been fired.

“If you are given an opportunity to consult with the prosecution’s expert and an opportunity to examine the fatal bullet, do you feel that you can reach such a conclusion?” Irvine asked.

The expert said he thought he could.

The smiling Irvine suggested that the witness leave the stand and be given an opportunity to make such an examination, that Steven Beardsley, the ballistics expert for the prosecution, would be only too glad to cooperate in every way with an expert of such renowned professional standing.

And then Irvine asked to recall Cooper Hale to the stand briefly. That did it.

Cooper Hale testified that, after hearing the shot, he had dashed upstairs, that he had found Endicott lying dead on the floor, that there was a bullet hole in the back of his head, that there was no gun on the bureau in the room.

“Now then,” Irvine said, “let me ask you a few questions about more recent events, Mr. Hale. Where do you live at the present time?”

Hale gave him his address.

“And where is that with reference to the estate known as the Whippoorwill, the estate of Karl Carver Endicott, deceased?”

“It is next door.”

“In the adjoining house?”

“Yes.”

“Directing your attention to the night before the commencement of this trial, did you notice anything unusual taking place at that time in the Endicott residence?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What?”

“Two persons were digging something up in a hedge of the Endicott home.”

“Did you have an opportunity to see those persons or recognize them?”

“Yes. I recognized them by their voices.”

“Will you tell us what happened?”

“My house was dark. I had retired. It was well after midnight. I saw the two individuals vaguely out in the hedge. I was curious, so I put on a dark robe and slipped out a side door. I learned from their low-voiced conversation that they were digging something up.”

“And then what happened?”

“I heard one of them say, ‘I found it!’ “

“Do you know who that person was?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who?”

“Donald Lam, a detective employed by the defense.”

“Had you heard his voice before?”

“Yes.”

“You recognized that voice?”

“I did.”

“Now then, prior to that time had you seen anyone burying anything near the location of the hedge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Endicott.”

“You mean Elizabeth Endicott, the widow of Karl Carver Endicott?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What had you seen her burying?”

“I don’t know what it was. It was something she took from a package. She dug a little hole in the ground, and placed this thing, whatever it was, in that hole, and covered it loosely with earth.”

“When was that?”

“It was that same night.”

“What time?”

“About an hour before Mr. Lam and Mrs. Cool dug up the gun.”

“Did you hear them refer to it as a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Now with reference to the place you saw this thing being buried, where was that? At what particular spot in the hedge? Can you point it out on the map?”

The witness pointed to a spot on the map.

“Now mark that with an ‘X’ and put your initials near it.”

The witness did so.

“With reference to the place where you saw this gun being dug up, or rather where you heard the persons at work digging up the weapon, can you identify that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where was it?”

“At exactly the same place, as nearly as I can tell,” the witness said.

Irvine turned to Quinn with a smile. “Cross-examine,” he said.

Fortunately at that point Quinn had sense enough to direct the Court’s attention to the fact that it was time for the midmorning recess.

The Court took its recess and Quinn came over to me.

“It’s all right,” I told him. “We’re going to outsmart them yet.”

“But what the hell happened?”

“What happened,” I said, “is perfectly obvious. That damn district attorney, with his romantic bearing, his expressive eyes, has completely hypnotized Helen Manning. She’s eating out of his hand. He’s convinced her that he’s her dish. She must have telephoned him as soon as we left her apartment and told him what had happened.

“There wasn’t, of course, any way that we could have prevented that. If we’d been the prosecution, we could have taken her into custody so she couldn’t have communicated with the other side.

“So the district attorney gets hold of Hale and tells him the sad news and Hale laughs, says he was just waiting for us to walk into that trap and tells the prosecutor for the first time about having seen Mrs. Endicott burying something in the hedge and about seeing us digging something up.”

“Do you think Irvine would let him do that without asking him why he hadn’t told his story before?”

“He asked all right, and Hale undoubtedly explained that he thought the authorities had the murder weapon, that he didn’t know exactly what we had found and that he was waiting to see what sort of a frame-up we were cooking up before showing his hand.”

“Irvine isn’t that dumb,” Quinn said. “Hale is lying.”

“We can’t prove it, and Irvine is so damned sold on his side of the case that it colors his judgment in every titling he does. He wants to win this case.”

“But what are we going to do now?” Quinn asked.

I said, “This is where you tear into that witness Hale. You ask him if it isn’t a fact that he came to my office and offered to shade his testimony so the defendant would be acquitted if we’d give him the breaks on leasing some of his property to an eastern manufacturer.”

“What?” Quinn exclaimed, startled. “You mean he made a proposition like that?”

“Ask him.”

“But I couldn’t ask him unless I had your assurance that such was the case.”

“Ask him,” I said. “You’re going to have to fight the devil with fire.”

“Will you assure me that you’ll get on the stand and testify that he said that?”

“No,” I said, “I won’t get on the stand and testify he said that in so many words. However, that was what he had in mind and he won’t be able to remember exactly what he said. Go ahead and ask him that.”

“Not unless you tell me that you’ll testify to that effect.”

I said, “Ask him why he went to our office. Ask him if he didn’t go there and suggest that he was a personal friend of the district attorney and that he would try to intercede on behalf of the defendant if I would co-operate with him.”

“Will you testify to that?”

“I’ll go this far, such an offer was made in his presence and with his approval.”

Court reconvened. Hale, smilingly self-confident, waited for the cross-examination.

Quinn said, “Isn’t it a fact that you have been acquainted with Donald Lam and Bertha Cool, the two detectives, for some time?”

“Not for a long time. For a relatively short time.”

“Isn’t it a fact that you told Mr. Lam and his partner Mrs. Cool that you were a friend of the district attorney?”

“I may have. I consider the district attorney my friend. I know many of the officials of this county and consider them my friends.”

“Didn’t you offer to intercede on behalf of the defendant with the district attorney if Mr. Lam would cooperate with you in a private business matter?”

“I did not.”

“Didn’t you offer to use your good offices with the district attorney in trying to make things easier for the defendant in this case, if Cool and Lam would work with you in a certain property matter? And didn’t they refuse to do so and thereby cause you to make threats?”

“Definitely not!”

“Didn’t that conversation take place in their office?”

“No, sir.”

“Were you ever in their office?”

The witness hesitated.

“Were you?” thundered Quinn.

“Well, yes.”

“Before the trial of this case?”

“Yes.”

“After the defendant had been arrested?”

“I believe it was. I can’t remember the exact date.”

“Didn’t you discuss this case with Mr. Lam and Mrs. Cool at that time?”

“We discussed a number of things.”

“Answer that question! Didn’t you discuss this case with them?”

“I may have mentioned it.”

“And in that connection, didn’t you discuss your friendship with the district attorney?”

“I may have.”

“Didn’t you suggest that you would be willing to co-operate?”

“Co-operate is a very loose word, Mr. Quinn.”

“I understand the meaning of the English language,” Quinn said. “Didn’t you offer to co-operate?”

“I may have used the word. But what I meant by it may have been entirely different from what the other parties thought I meant by it.”

“But you did go to their office?”

“Yes.”

“After the case was pending?”

“Yes.”

“And you did mention your friendship for the district attorney?”

“Yes. Either I did or my companion did.”

“And you did offer to use your good offices in case they would co-operate?”

“Well, I may have, or I may have offered something in the nature of co-operation. I don’t know.”

“All right. Wasn’t that offer refused?”

“There wasn’t any definite offer which could have been refused.”

“You left the office after making some threats?”

“I— No.”

“Would you say you left the office with the same friendly, good feeling with which you had entered it?”

“Yes.”

“Did you shake hands with Donald Lam when you left?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Did you shake hands with Mrs. Cool?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Isn’t it a fact that you did not shake hands?”

“I have no recollection in the matter.”

“Why did you go to their office?” Quinn asked.

“Well... it’s... it’s—”

“Oh, Your Honor, I object!” Irvine said. “This matter has already gone far enough.”

“The objection is overruled,” Judge Lawton snapped.

“Why did you go to their office?”

“I wanted certain information.”

“About what?”

“About rumors that were going around about a manufacturing establishment which was planning to locate in Citrus Grove.”

“And didn’t you mention at that time that you had real estate holdings in Citrus Grove?”

“I may have.”

“And didn’t you at that time offer to use your friendship with the district attorney and your influence if Cool and Lam would co-operate with you?”

“Not in those words.”

“But that was the idea back of your visit?”

“No, sir.”

“What was the idea of your visit?”

“I wanted to get what information I could.”

“And at that time and as a part of getting what information you could, you brought up the fact that you were friendly with the district attorney, and you did offer to co-operate in the case of the defendant John Dittmar Ansel, in case you in turn received co-operation from Cool and Lam?

“Yes or no?” Quinn thundered.

“Not exactly.”

Quinn turned away with an expression of disgust. “That,” he said, “is all.”

Irvine announced the tests which were being made by the experts would require some time and suggested that Court adjourn until two o’clock.

Judge Lawton complied with the request.

“Meet me in your offices,” I said to Quinn as he left the courtroom. “I don’t want to talk with you here.” I left the courtroom.

Newspaper reporters were exploding flashbulbs in my face, also getting pictures of Bertha Cool.

One of the newspaper reporters asked Bertha Cool if she had any comments on Hale’s testimony.

“You’re damn right I have,” Bertha said.

“What are those comments?” the newspaperman asked.

“You may say for me,” Bertha said, “that Hale offered to use his good offices in getting the murder charge reduced to manslaughter if we’d give him certain information.

“You can also state that I’m willing to testify to that, and if that district attorney tries to cross-examine me, I’ll tear his goddam can off.”

I went to Quinn’s office. Mrs. Endicott was with him.

“Well?” Quinn asked.

I said, “I want you to do one thing, Quinn. If you’ll do exactly as I say we’re going to come out all right.”

“What is it?” Quinn asked.

I said, “Get the experts on the stand. Show that Endicott was killed with the Manning gun and not with the Ansel gun. Let everything else go by the boards. Concentrate on that.”

I turned to Mrs. Endicott. “Did you bury that gun?”

She shook her head. “That testimony is absolutely unqualifiedly false.”

“But,” Quinn said, “how the devil am I going to prove it, Lam? If I put her on the witness stand, they’re going to examine her concerning her movements on the night of the murder. Then they’re going to smash her alibi.”

“They’re trying Ansel for the crime,” I said.

“I know, but if they can discredit Mrs. Endicott it will reflect on Ansel. It will look as though the two of them planned the whole thing.”

I said, “If you do what I tell you to, you won’t need to put anybody on the stand.”

“What?”

“Show the crime was committed with that gun that we turned over to the expert last night.”

He seemed dubious.

“Damn it!” I said. “I know what I’m doing. Do what I tell you to and make the argument I tell you, and with that jury you’re going to be all right.”

“They’ll convict him of something,” he said.

“All right,” I said, “it’s an unfair question to ask you in front of your client, but what tactics do you have planned? Do you dare to put Mrs. Endicott on the stand?”

“No.”

“Do you dare to put the defendant on the stand?”

“No.”

“What’s going to happen if you submit your case without putting either one of them on the stand?”

He made a grimace. “Ansel’s going to be convicted of first-degree murder.”

“All right,” I told him. “You’ve got to do what I tell you to whether you want to or not. Forget about your case. Concentrate on that gun, and when you make your argument, challenge the district attorney to tell the jury exactly what the prosecution claims took place. Dare him to reconstruct the crime for the jury.”

Quinn was dubious. “He has the closing argument. He’s smart. If I challenge him, he’ll reconstruct that crime until the jurors will feel that they were in the room watching Ansel shoot Endicott in the back of the head.”

“With the Helen Manning gun?” I said.

He thought that over.